


Green Foliage, Pink Flowers

by MachaSWicket



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, arrow season 4 spoilers, inspired by the arrow season 4 trailer, speculative fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4745000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MachaSWicket/pseuds/MachaSWicket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SUMMARY:  That perfectly manicured yard in the S4 trailer got me to thinking...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Foliage, Pink Flowers

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS: to callistawolf for letting me use her gorgeous gif. :) :)

[](http://s462.photobucket.com/user/slackermama1275/media/Fandom%20Stuff/My%20Graphics/s4trailer-1.gif.html) 

 

Felicity loves their house.

She loves its weird little dormer windows, she loves its two-car garage that is entirely too big for the Porsche, she loves the bright interiors and the open space and the sunshine of it all. Mostly, though, she loves what it means. 

She loves that she and Oliver have a  _home_  together.

Even if it is just the slightest, littlest bit on the Stepford side of things. 

Just... just the  _tiniest_  little bit Stepford-y. Because the lawns, mostly. And the gardens. Every single house on their street has the same basic look –- lawn maintained at a rigid 2″ height, and a splay of reasonably colored plants and flowers along the walkway leading visitors from the driveway to the front door. 

 _Tasteful_  is the word that comes to mind. Which isn’t  _bad_ , necessarily. Maybe more like...  _unexpected_  for the two of them. Except that when she says it out loud, it sounds a lot more judge-y than she really means it. 

Oliver had laughed and laughed when she told him, his big body shaking against hers that first night in  _their home_. “You could’ve mentioned this  _before_  we signed the papers,” he’d murmured.

She’d reassured him of her satisfaction level with, well, with _everything_ –- verbally and non-verbally. And that had been that.

Until she looks around at the perfectly manicured lawns and precisely placed plants. Until she studies the basic  _sameness_  surrounding their house as every other house on the street. Something about that rankles, and she can’t really put it into words. It’s just -– they’re different. They’ve been through so much –- particularly Oliver -– that it’s strange to her, this idea of living in an unremarkable space with such a remarkable man.

She wants this house, yes, but she wants it to reflect  _them_  somehow. At least a little bit. So she stands out in the street –- it’s a suburban neighborhood with little traffic besides the minivans and SUVs leaving for errands and coming back -– and she bites her lip and stares at the yard.

The amount of  _green_  appeals to her, in a very in-joke kind of way. But at the same time, it makes her think about growing up in the desert, in a small apartment with a couple of sad, neglected succulents in the window over the sink that never, ever stopped dripping, no matter the drought stage. She grew up in a place where lush green lawns like this signified wealth, while everyone else was surrounded by browns and greys. 

She grew up with rock gardens and hardy, prickly, unwelcoming plants that flourished in the heat with a minimum of care from anyone around them. Plants that didn’t bloom very often, but when they did, it was breathtaking –- bright, celebratory pinks and reds and yellows.

This  _tasteful_ garden that came with the house, Felicity learns the first week,  _this_ garden needs attention. It needs water; a lot of water.  _So_ much water it makes her desert-born conscience tweak a little bit.

The garden needs weeding, which she looked up carefully, because it’s not like she can tell  _decorative greenery_  from  _invasive weeds_. She’s never been a gardener before.

And at the end of the day, the garden along the walkway is mostly groomed shrubbery. The plants that do bloom produce small, tasteful flowers in careful sprays, nothing terribly bright or big or bold.

All of which has led her here.

Felicity is kneeling in mulch, ignoring the mild stabbiness of sharp edges against her skin, her hands sweating in these weirdly plasticized purple gloves -– gloves that have not at all protected her  _arms_  from scratches and welts because  _who knew_  she had just kind of a generalized sensitivity to plants?  

(”It’s my body rejecting nature, Oliver,” she’ll explain later, once a shower has failed to soothe the red marks along her forearms, and he’ll pause in middle of a particularly pleasant activity because laughing and oral sex don’t really go together all that well, dammit. And when he manages to recover a bit, he’ll simply grin at her in delight, which will make her defensively continue, “I’m serious. I told you I’m not outdoorsy. This is why I can’t go camping, Oliver. I get _welts_. Just from general, you know,  _touching_  of random garden plants. Can you imagine what would happen if I stumbled into some poison oak?” He’ll start laughing again then, and she’ll just glower at him and say, “You  _know_  me; you _know_  I would totally fall into a poison oak tree. Wait –- are they even trees? Because oak  _implies_  trees, but–-” He’ll shut her up then, in her favorite way.)

Still, regardless of her body’s strange reaction to plant life, Felicity is determined to do this right. To do this  _successfully_. She can’t cook –- she knows this and it frustrates her, because cooking is chemistry, and she was really  _good_ at chemistry in school. 

Stubbornly, she keeps trying. 

Supportively, Oliver keeps taste-testing her latest failures, bless his adventurous soul, but she  _knows_  she’s not good at it. 

She is failing some of this domesticity stuff  _hard_ , which is why it’s possible she’s a little  _too_ focused on the garden. Dammit.

Because, yeah, she can water the plants every day, and she can squint at her tablet in the glare of the sunshine to play Apples-to-Apples with some unidentified probable-weeds. But if she’s doing this, then she’s  _doing this_. In for a penny and all that.

So much so that when Oliver went out for his afternoon parkouring session (he claims he’s subtle about this, but she is very doubtful that a man with his grace and athleticism -– not to mention that body and his ridiculously handsome face -– can go unnoticed while leaping picnic tables and doing weird flips off of tree trunks or whatever), she’d borrowed the Porsche. She feels a little bad about the dirt and scattered leaves her errand left on the teeny, tiny leather backseat. But it’ll blow out when the top’s down, right?

Mostly, though, she feels accomplished. Sure, she hasn’t actually  _planted_  much yet, but she’s got three new pots, a couple bags of potting soil, and five trays of flowers. The brightest she could find, which means the edge of the driveway is currently lined with screaming yellow pansies with tiny purple faces; bright orange geraniums; fluttery hot pink cyclamen; flows of bright blinding white petunias, and the craziest spotted-leaf plant called  _lungwort_ , of all things. 

They’re  _gorgeous_ , and they don’t really match each other or the general neighborhood decor. Felicity loves them. 

So she sets to work. She is sweaty and grumpy and scratched up, and only half-done when Oliver reappears, stopping above her so she’s in his shadow. 

“Oh, thank God,” she says, because it’s at least five degrees cooler out of the direct sunlight. “Can you just stand there? For like another hour or so? It’s _really_  hot in the sun.”

Oliver’s smile falters for a moment. “Did you put on sunscreen?”

Felicity is exasperated and touched at the same time. She hooks a dirty gardening glove around his calf and tilts towards him, pressing a kiss just above his kneecap. “I’m good,” she assures him. “Just kinda sweaty.” She frowns at the smear of brown she left on his leg. “And dirty. Like, actual  _dirt_  dirty. Huh.”

He huffs a laugh and runs his palm along the top of her head, smoothing her hair, which  _was_  up in a careful ponytail. Stubborn tendrils have escaped since then, curling in the heat. “Do you want my hat?” he asks.

She grins up at him. “I’m almost done.”

Oliver quirks a skeptical eyebrow, glancing pointedly at the three trays of plants by his feet. “Oh, really.”

“Those are going in the pots,” she explains, gesturing at the cobalt blue pots sitting in the middle of the driveway. “Much quicker.” You know,  _probably_. It’s not like she’s done this before, but it seems like it  _should_  be quicker than digging actual holes in the ground.

He nods. “Okay. Want help?”

“Nah,” she answers, and she can’t explain why, but she needs to do this herself. She needs to contribute something to the everyday kind of life they’re trying to live. And if he’s going to cook for her and organize the bills (that, yes, she’s mostly the one paying), then she can do this.

Oh, and the dishes. But rinsing things and putting them in the dishwasher is hardly pulling her own weight, considering Oliver’s actual talent for cooking and adventuresome spirit about trying new things.

She can’t explain, but when Oliver squats beside her to kiss her properly, she thinks maybe he understands. He tastes a little sweaty, and when she pulls back, she’s managed to smear dirt on his neck, too. So she reaches up and touches the tip of his nose with her dirty gloves. “Sorry,” she says, and she is not sorry at all. “Got a little dirt on you.”

He laughs and eases to his feet. Gracefully, the way he does everything. “I’ll bring you some water.”

Felicity thanks him and takes a little break to watch him go. Because he looks really good walking away.

“Stop ogling me,” he calls over his shoulder.

But there’s laughter in his voice and she just raises her voice and yells back, “Never happening!”

So Felicity drinks her Oliver-provided water in several large, gasping gulps, then goes back to work. Sweat rolls down her back, plastering her purple tank top to her body, leaving her bra damp. She ignores that, and the bees that buzz around, and the scrapes and scratches along her shins from kneeling in mulch. She digs and plants and presses the dirt back into place. 

It becomes a simple rhythm. Her thoughts go fuzzy and indistinct, and she just basks in the sun and the earthy smell of the dirt. Not even the occasional earthworm damages her calm.

And when she’s done, there are three bright blue pots with riotous blooms – pink and white and red, jumbled together. There are little clumps of bright blue and happy yellow and cheerful orange mixed in among the neighborhood-standard plants. It’s traditional, but it’s not.

Felicity steps back into the street and looks again and, yes,  _now_ this feels like home.  _Now_  this feels like a place she and Oliver could live. It’s his calming cool tones and her unrepentant brightness. It’s his green and her pink.

Oliver appears in the driveway, glancing at the empty plastic trays stacked near the garage door, and the empty potting soil bags, and the abandoned gardening gloves, and the thin layer of potting soil over basically  _everything._ He joins her in the street, smelling like his body wash, and throws an arm around her shoulder, joining her in gazing at their house.

Suddenly shy, Felicity can’t make herself look up at him. “Do you like it?” she asks. Because maybe she should’ve talked to him first? It’s  _their_  house, after all, not just hers. What if he hates it? What if he  _wants_  a Stepford house and she just ruined his dream?

“Hey,” Oliver says, half-turning to her, because he can read her as well as she can read him these days. His palm soothes the damp material along her spine. “I love it.”

She lets out a breath and looks up at him, evaluating. Not that he can lie to her, but still. “Are you sure? I’m sorry I didn’t–-”

“I  _love_  it,” he interrupts, and leans down to kiss her. “I didn’t realize it,” he says, “but you made it look...” He trails off with a small shrug and a small smile.

There’s a weird tension in her ribcage as she waits for him to finish his thought. “Made it look –- what? Better? Less Stepford-y?”

Oliver tugs her closer into his side, and she slides her arm around his waist. “Yes, definitely better,” he says slowly. “The color -– it looks like  _you_. Like somewhere you would live,” he explains.

Felicity feels the sudden, unexpected sting of tears. They’re  _just_  flowers, she tells herself. Stop being ridiculous. “Oliver...” she manages.

“It looks like  _you_ , Felicity,” he repeats, turning to face her fully, pulling her into his embrace. He tips his chin down, smiling at her. “That means it looks like _home_.”

There’s really no response for that other than to kiss him. So she does. Passionately. Right there in the middle of the street. He kisses her back enthusiastically, his hands wandering down to cup her ass and pull her up flush against him. Until the vaguely judgmental redhead from the house at the corner chirps the horn and drives slowly around them.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Our garden is a bright, cheerful place, so the relatively muted landscaping of their house struck me as something that would, well, strike Felicity.


End file.
